


the universe is a big place

by Kalpirock



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Brainwashing, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Reunions, also YES Atlas At Last is my favorite story mission what of it, i wont lie i dont use this site so i dont know what tags to put, last thing i dont think zero is human in canon but this is my house and i can do what i want, please god help me, sort of???, theres a rescue mission i guess, what i will say is that if you @ me about where arms race fits into the timeline i will cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:09:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28041438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalpirock/pseuds/Kalpirock
Summary: Axton hasn't seen or heard from Zer0 since the latter left Pandora. He thought it wouldn't be a problem to forget about him, up until he gets some mysterious instructions from Zer0 to come to Promethea.
Relationships: Axton/Zer0 (Borderlands)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

It would have been incorrect to say that it had been a while since Axton had carried a gun. He carried one all the time; to be unarmed on Pandora was asking for something gruesome to happen to you. However, he had to admit that it had been a fair bit of time since he had walked around with an assault rifle against his body in a patrol carry. He wasn’t a Vault Hunter anymore, and he was fine with that, but it was easy to forget it when he was walking around looking like one.

The Atlas soldier at the entrance to Atlas campus gave a single nod to acknowledge Axton. The gun the man held was at the opposite diagonal to Axton’s, and, Axton noted, was sleek and rounded with a crisp paint job in professional colors. Nothing like the boxy and very much dead guns he’d seen from the old Atlas. “State your business.”

“Zer0 told me I should be here, I think.”

“He did say something about sending a visitor.” The soldier tapped at the keyboard on his computer for a moment, then gave Axton a once-over. “You match the notes. Head on in.”

It was bizarre, Axton thought, to be on Atlas campus. It was certainly impressive, but the last time Atlas had been operating, he had still been a proper military man with Dahl. To see it revitalized like this would have been unthinkable not long ago. The red lights washing over him as he headed into the lobby didn’t help the vague sense of unease wrestling around in the pit of his stomach. 

He repeated his reason for being here to the receptionist in Rhys’s office, and a moment later found himself in front of the man himself. Rhys was seated at his desk, one hand supporting his head and the other scrawling on a piece of paper, but he looked up when he heard footsteps approaching. 

“Hey, there you are! Zer0 said you’d be coming, uh… mmm…” He seemed to be struggling for a name.

“I’m Axton.”

“Axton! Yes! That’s you. I should know that, I’ve seen your show. I thought you had glasses now.”

“I wear contacts any time I have to bring a real gun.”

“Of course. I almost wish you’d brought the bow tie, though. Anyway, you’re another Crimson Raider, right?”

“Ex, mostly. Zer0 and I were both with the Raiders back in the day.”

“Right. So, what’s the situation?”

Axton cocked his head. “I was hoping you would know.”

“Huh?”

“Zer0 just told me he needed me to come to Promethea for a mission, but didn’t tell me why.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing. He sent me a message that said ‘Be at Atlas in the next 36 hours’ so I asked him what for and how he was doing and didn’t get a reply. You know how he can be.”

“Oh, I really do know. But that’s strange of him to ask you. Don’t get me wrong! We can use all the help we can get in fighting off Maliwan, but I have four vault hunters from the Raiders already handling the big stuff.” Rhys glanced down at the papers on his desk and shuffled a few of them around. “And otherwise... I mean this in the nicest way possible, but Zer0 talks about you sometimes, and you don’t seem very interested in going back to military life.”

“No offense taken. Turns out it’s not for me. ...Does Zer0 really talk about me?” Axton had been under the impression that Zer0 wouldn’t recognize him in broad daylight anymore.

“From time to time. He mentions his friends from the Raiders occasionally if someone asks, but sometimes he’ll say something about them unprompted. Then it’s usually you, and if not then it’s Maya.”

“Weird. This is the first time he’s texted me since he left Pandora.”

“Well, you said it yourself earlier: you know how he can be. Speaking of Zer0, I haven’t even heard from him in a day or two. He dropped off some intel for me to help the Vault Hunters, and then vanished.”

“He does that.”

“Usually I would agree, but since Maliwan showed up I can usually get a read on where he is. Even if I don’t hear from him, someone else has.” Rhys rubbed at one eye. “I don’t think I need to worry, though. He can handle himself.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. Just back to his usual antics.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Well, if you want to hang around till we find out what he wanted you here for, I can get you a room in the campus dorms. Let me just check that I can get ahold of you over ECHO.” Rhys grabbed an ECHO device from a drawer in his desk and started pressing buttons.

“Sounds great. I’ll let Salvador know he’ll be on his own for a few days at least.” Axton extracted his own ECHO device from his bag. 

Both devices went off at the same time with an incoming transmission. Rhys perked up. “Zer0! See, he’s fine.” He pressed a button to enter the channel, and immediately started talking “Hey there buddy, good t- KATAGAWA!”

A smug voice that Axton half-recognized seeped out of the device. “Heya Rhys! Good to see you too!” Axton joined the channel as well, but stayed muted. The man speaking was thin, had a perfectly kept black pompadour, and the collar of the shirt under his blazer sported a white and orange Maliwan logo. Katagawa, presumably. 

Rhys was almost immediately frustrated to the point of rushing through his speech and stumbling over words. “You’re just looking for attention at this point, aren’t you? Zer0 drops his ECHO or something, and you decide you have to be a jerk about it. Give it back already.” 

Katagawa raised his eyebrows, which naturally sat in a high arch. “Give it back? Well, I would, but I don’t think he wants it very badly right now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rhys’s idea of putting on a brave face seemed to be feigning anger, but it didn’t work; Katagawa’s cryptic bullshit got to him right away, and it was obvious.

“I mean, you tell me.” The camera panned over to show more of the background. It was a corner, not very well lit, and crumpled against the wall was Zer0. He wasn’t moving. One arm was wrapped protectively around his own ribcage as if it hurt badly, and the other was limply rolled out on the floor in front of him. One of the devices attached to his suit was visibly sparking, and several more looked damaged. There were miscellaneous splatters of blood on the floor, but the source wasn’t immediately obvious.

Rhys cried out in horror. Axton found himself frozen in place. He had never seen Zer0 in such a state. He’d seen him lose a fight, he’d watched him drop dead and go through the godawful Hyperion respawn system, but he’d never seen Zer0 seem  _ defeated _ . Rhys must not have either, because he was in hysterics. “No, this isn’t real! You’re just trying to mess with me. That’s not Zer0. He’s okay. He’s always okay. That’s a fake.”

“Is it?” Katagawa kicked Zer0 in the ribs. Zer0 let out a pained wail, the sound of which turned into a growl at the end as he audibly tried to close his teeth on it. Axton’s blood went cold. Zer0 was quiet in many senses, and to hear him cry out like that was another first. 

“Zer0! What the hell happened, buddy?” Rhys sounded close to tears.

“What do you  _ think _ happened, Rhys?” Katagawa turned the camera away from Zer0, but gave him another kick as he walked away from good measure, then spoke over the awful sound Zer0 was making. The tone of his little speech had turned abruptly from teasing to malicious. “You send your little friends snooping around, and the shoe is gonna drop on them. After you sent your  _ other _ cronies to blow up the Zanara, you should count your lucky fucking stars he’s alive, and that I didn’t blow his brains out immediately.”

“You’re a bastard. You’re not gonna get away with this.” Rhys was actually crying now.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” As Katagawa continued, Maliwan troops started to show up in the background, appearing to collect Zer0 and take him away. “Listen, you have one day to hand over that Vault key fragment of yours before I get bored and kill your friend. You don’t want to play the game, that’s fine, but don’t cry to me about it when I get mean.” Katagawa suddenly switched back to the sunny and smug personality he’d been wearing at the beginning of the conversation. “Give it some thought. See ya!”

The call dropped, and Rhys let his ECHO drop onto his desk with a heavy thump. He didn’t move for a little while, and when he did, it was just to turn and look at Axton with the saddest eyes that Axton had ever seen on an adult. 

“So.” Axton put his ECHO away. “Now we go get him, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, we go get him.” Rhys visibly took a deep breath. “He’s gonna be fine.”

“Of course he will. He doesn’t die so easily.” Axton genuinely believed himself when he said this, but that belief was shakier than it had been ten minutes ago. He’d encountered very few things that could even catch Zer0, and even fewer that could actually do anything to hurt him after the fact. If this guy had pulled it off…

“I’m gonna talk to Lilith. I’m gonna need all hands on deck if we’re sending people to Maliwan.”

“I mean, I’m sure she has some good people, but if you’re planning to launch a full-out assault you won’t win.”

“But-”

“You’re barely holding here. Keep your men to defend yourselves; I’ll negotiate with the Raiders.”

“...Okay.” Rhys exhaled. “Don’t be afraid to let me know if I can help at all. I don’t know what I’d do without Zer0.”

“We’ll bring him back safe. You’ll barely even remember he was gone.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the long part im sorry

Zer0’s last location readout had been heading for one of the massive Maliwan command ships circling Promethea, so the Raiders went ahead and shot a drop pod into the glowing center. Ellie’s estimation had been that the glowing middle of each ship was basically a large teleporter, and she had been right.

Upon exiting the drop pod, Axton found that they were in a Maliwan hangar. Set up in orderly rows were round, inactive Maliwan ships, most looking intact and ready to fly. There were, however, already soldiers shouting to each other about the intruders. Amara and Fl4k were the first to rush in, a giant spiderant following close behind the latter. 

Axton barely had a chance to get on his feet properly before Moze took off at a full sprint, and he had to scramble to keep up with her. She might have been short, but she sure wasn’t fucking around. They had decided back on Sanctuary that he and Moze would make a break for it and look for Zer0; Zane had wanted to do it by himself, but Lilith decided that he was too likely to get himself killed going alone.

Moze led the way along the left side of the hangar. A couple of stragglers who caught sight of them had to be dispatched, but the sound of gunfire was covered up by the fight in the middle of the building. The two of them managed a quick escape through a side door near the exit of the hangar. 

They appeared to be on some sort of military base. There were a few other hangars in a line next to the one they had come from, and some low-lying buildings that were probably barracks nearby. Scattered across the area were various other buildings, but the one that caught Axton’s attention was the tall, dark gray one that was almost in the middle of everything else. 

“Two o’clock.” Moze slid to a stop as she got behind a short concrete wall. “Unit moving into the tall building. Defending their hostage, you think?” 

Axton watched the group of soldiers that Moze had pointed out. They were moving at a brisk jog, like they’d been called for something specific. “My money’s on yes. Don’t see anyone else heading their way. Good chance to follow them.”

“Affirmative.” Moze waited until the group had gone inside the building, then darted out from her hiding spot with Axton hot on her heels.

The building, when they entered, was surprisingly empty. Axton kept going, but shifted his grip on his gun and kept glancing behind himself. This had been too easy. The soldiers ahead of them hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t turned around, had hardly even paused, and no one else had appeared to stop him and Moze from walking right up to a hostage. “Stay sharp. This seems bad.”

“All we have to do is keep moving.” They entered an open room with desks in various places around the floor. “Katagawa won’t know what hit him.” 

“Oh, won’t I?” A familiar voice spoke in front of them as Katagawa stepped through the door, which promptly closed behind him. He had soldiers flanking him on either side, and seemed perfectly calm.

“Give me a reason I shouldn’t put a bullet in your head right now.” Moze had trained her gun on Katagawa, and Axton did likewise. 

Katagawa didn’t answer. He just nodded to something in the background, and Moze was the only one who reacted in time. Axton hit the floor hard, belly-first. He considered himself pretty good at tolerating pain, but he wasn’t as young as he used to be. With a groan, he turned to look; standing over him was this Tyreen Calypso he had heard so much about, with her brother right behind her. She was looking at Moze. “Hey, superfan! You brought a friend.”

Tyreen didn’t have time to be smug. Upon hearing a loud metallic sound, Axton looked sideways and noticed that Moze’s mech had appeared, in spite of barely fitting under the ceiling in this room. One side of it started charging up what appeared to be an electric beam. It fired at Tyreen, who simply blipped out of the way in a bright flash of fire. The shot exploded against the wall behind Axton.

Tyreen held up both hands and fired a blast of energy at Iron Bear. It must have done something to the circuitry, because the mech immediately tilted sideways and almost fell over before Moze managed to eject. As quickly as it had digistructed into the room, it was gone. Tyreen advanced on Moze, who backed away with her gun drawn.

The Raiders couldn’t afford to lose her here. Axton grasped for his turret. Troy moved to stop him, but wasn’t fast enough; Axton slammed the turret deploy module on the ground, and started fending off Troy so he could get up. “Moze, run!”

Tyreen turned around to defend herself from the turret, and Moze used the distraction to dart out of the corner she was being pushed into. “You’re out of your-”

“Go!” Axton tried to muster his best authoritative shout, and it seemed to work; she took a couple steps back. “Get the hell out of here!”

Moze hesitated, but as soon as Tyreen took out the turret with another blast, Moze turned and ran the way she and Axton had come. In no time flat, she was out of sight. 

Axton had gotten to his feet. Tyreen had also recovered, and in one astonishingly quick move, she seized him by the throat and lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing at all. Axton could feel that his body was dangling, but it felt more like he was floating in water. This tiny woman shouldn’t have been able to--

Troy had moved to follow Moze, but Katagawa waved for him to come back. “This one’s a good enough catch.”

Axton tried to struggle. Tyreen was smaller and thinner than him; he should have been able to pry her hand off or even just thrash hard enough that his weight would wiggle him loose, but nothing worked. His muscles were tiring much faster than they should have. Tyreen’s Siren tattoos were lit up blood red, and out of the very bottom of his vision, Axton could see little red particles seeping from his skin into hers. 

“Don’t kill him just yet.” Katagawa stepped up as Axton started gasping for breath. “You can have him by the end of the day, but he’s useful until then.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Tyreen dropped Axton, and his legs buckled underneath him. He couldn’t quite catch his breath, and every fiber of his body hurt when he moved. There was a painful pressure in his chest that he couldn’t really figure out; his brain was a little hazy too.

The ensuing conversation between Katagawa and the Calypsos was only partially intelligible as he tried not to throw up. It was strange; Axton had been in mortal peril more times than he could count, but none of those times had he felt so unable to help himself. His body was exhausted in a way it had never been. 

After a moment, the Maliwan soldiers that had come with Katagawa dragged Axton away. One of them picked up the flat unit that his turret retreated into when not active, as well as his gun. They took away his ECHO and almost all of the small weapons on his person. They did miss a small knife in one of his shoes, but Axton didn’t hold out much hope that he would keep it for long. 

After taking his stuff, they threw him into a small dark-gray cutout in the wall of a hallway, then closed a hard light wall behind him and walked away. Axton let out a groan. Everything still hurt. He tried to push himself up to a sitting position and pulled it off after a little struggling. He had no idea whether Moze was coming back with reinforcements, and he almost hoped for her sake that she didn’t. Between Maliwan and the Calypsos, the Raiders couldn’t afford to lose anyone. 

The room around him was smooth. It was a pretty standard holding cell, out of the ones he’d seen, except for the hard light to close it up. That seemed like an awfully expensive move. There was a pattern of hexagons across the surface that made it a little hard to see through, but other than that it was transparent. And in the cell opposite his own, Axton thought he could see Zer0 slumped over in a similar state of exhaustion to his own. 

“Hey!” Axton dragged himself closer to the hard-light screen. “Zer0! Can you hear me, buddy?”

The response he got came from down the hall. It was a voice he didn’t recognize. “He can.” The soldier who appeared around the corner was wearing the cape-like red-orange getup of a Maliwan Badass, which wasn’t comforting.

“Another one of you, huh?” The soldier stood at the entrance to Axton’s cell. “I thought after we caught one, you’d have the good sense to stay away.”

Axton didn’t say anything. Admittedly, good sense had never been his strong suit, but he wasn’t about to participate in friendly ribbing with this clown.

“Fine, be like that. The boss wants some more threats at Atlas HQ within an hour. Who’s first?”

“Me. Over here.” Axton spoke without thinking. He was in no shape to take whatever this guy could dole out, but he expected Zer0 to be in worse shape. If he could draw attention for long enough, maybe--

The soldier cocked his head. “What’s got you so eager, bud? It’s making me think we should start with the skinny guy.”

Fuck! God damn it. The soldier let down the hard-light wall in front of Zer0’s cell and stepped in. Axton pressed up close to the front of his own cell. He slammed a hand against it, hoping to make some noise and attract attention, but all that came of it was a vague static-y sound.

The soldier prowled around Zer0, and reached up to touch a button on his helmet. A small green light on the front went on. “I’ve heard a lot of chatter about you. I guess I’m supposed to have heard of you. The boys were saying earlier that no one’s ever seen your face; what if we changed that?”

Axton tried to hit the hard-light wall again and it worked no better than the last time. It was true, as far as he knew, that no one had ever seen Zer0 without a helmet. He certainly hadn’t, and he had been naked in a room with the guy. For this to be where that ended just seemed wrong.

The soldier didn’t care. He grabbed Zer0’s helmet by the back and ripped it away. Axton inhaled sharply.

Zer0 had his hair shaved into a fluffy fauxhawk, bleached pure white with some natural black visible at the roots. One of his eyes was a soft, dark brown, and the other was a bright, unnatural shade of blue. On the same side as the blue eye, there was a softly glowing port embedded into his temple. Both eyes were turned into a sharp point at the outside with eyeliner. He had thick streaks of dark facepaint across his face, and his top lip painted black. He was honestly stunning, and Axton would have had more time to appreciate that if he hadn’t also noticed the splotches of blood smeared across Zer0’s face and dripping out of his mouth.

“That’s disappointing. I was hoping for some kind of alien shit.” The soldier kicked at Zer0, and Zer0 squinted for a moment in a light wince, as well as grunted in pain, but otherwise maintained a steely forward stare. “Not to worry. We’ll have plenty to find out when we take your tech. Wish I could say the same for your buddy over there. Who’s he, anyway?”

“I’ll kill him.” Zer0’s voice didn’t have the same robotic quality to it without his helmet, which was unsettling. Axton froze. What? Zer0 hadn’t moved or said anything the whole time, and now he was offering to kill his allies? After  _ he _ had called Axton out in the first place?

“Oh?” The soldier visibly perked up. “Just like that?”

“You want some bloodshed?” Zer0 always spoke flatly, but he took on a certain tone when speaking in haiku. Axton had never resented it, but now he wished Zer0 would drop it and explain himself. “I’ll show you some bloodshed, then. / Give me back my sword.”

“Zer0, what the hell are you talking about?” Axton hated feeling so helpless. He smacked at the hard-light wall again.

“The sword’s a lot to ask, but I might be able to pull some strings.” The soldier swayed back on one foot and put a hand up to his chin. “...Yeah, that might work. Sit tight, boys.” He closed up Zer0’s cell and walked away the way he had come. Once he was out of earshot, Axton sidled up to the hard light wall of his own cell. 

“What the hell was that about?” Axton felt that this was, perhaps, urgent enough for Zer0 to answer him about, but Zer0 had gone back to not moving or speaking. “Zer0, please, man…”

There wasn’t an answer. The only sign that Zer0 was even alive was that he moved one arm to wipe some of the blood off of his mouth, which didn’t even smudge the facepaint by his lower lip.

Axton had no choice but to sit and wait. As time went on, the pain was improving slightly, but not fast enough. If Zer0 really did want to kill him, he was fucked beyond words. Even under the best of circumstances, he had the muscle to overpower Zer0, but Zer0 had the agility to stop Axton from ever touching him. They had sparred a few times back in the Raider days, and one-on-one, Axton never won.

With a sinking feeling, he remembered that he had never known Zer0 to outright lie about things. He would be silent, he would say completely inscrutable, vague things, but Axton couldn’t remember a single time Zer0 had said something to him that was outright not true. He had no choice but to take him at his word. 

Axton had no idea how much time had passed when the Maliwan soldier came back. The bastard appeared to be carrying Zer0’s sword, as promised. He took down Zer0’s hard light barrier and dropped the sword in front of him, as well as a single med-hypo. Not enough to fix him, but enough to let him stand up, at least. “Make it worth my while.”

As Zer0 reached for the med-hypo, the soldier stepped away, and the hard-light barriers switched; instead of covering the opening of each cell, they were now separating the cells from the hallway on either side, allowing Zer0 the open space between the cells to approach. Zer0 plunged the sharp end of the syringe into his shoulder, through his catsuit, then picked up his sword and extended the blade. It was the same electric blue as Zer0’s one eye, with a vague hint of red visible in the trail it left when it moved.

Zer0 had always seemed a bit robotic, but the blank stare on his face made him seem truly inhuman as he strode calmly across the hallway towards Axton’s cell. He seemed more like he was acting on command rather than thinking. 

Axton just sat with his head down. He could hardly get up; he couldn’t fight back. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to look Zer0 in the eyes and hurt him, even in self-defense. 

Zer0 grabbed Axton by the back of the collar and threw him belly-down on the floor. In spite of the lack of bruising or any other visible damage on his body, Axton felt like he’d just been dropped squarely on an open wound. Zer0’s knee pressing into his back only made it worse, and he let out a pained growl through his teeth. He could feel breath on the back of his neck as Zer0 leaned down close. “Defend yourself.” His voice was barely a hiss.

“I can’t.” Axton tried to roll sideways and throw Zer0 off balance and barely managed a wiggle. One of Zer0’s four-fingered hands came down on the back of Axton’s neck.

“Do you trust me?”

“I want to.” Axton found his own voice low as well, not out of a conscious effort but because it was the best he could do at the moment. He tried to move again, and this time Zer0 gave him just enough leeway to push up on his elbows before shoving him down again. “You’re making it kind of hard, though.”

Zer0 didn’t say anything else, but he stopped putting pressure on Axton’s back with his knee. Axton took the opportunity to flip over and throw Zer0 off at the price of searing, sharp pain shooting through his hips and shoulders. Zer0 made a show of falling backwards against the hard-light wall furthest from the observing soldier. As he leaned into the recoil from the impact, he shot forward again and shoved Axton’s back against the opposite wall, just in front of the soldier.

Axton looked up. Zer0 would not make eye contact with him. The end of Zer0’s sword was pointing at Axton’s left breast, poised to plunge straight into his heart. He started to move, to maybe wiggle free, but Zero grabbed him around the underside of his chin and held him in place. 

Axton closed his eyes tight. “I missed you, you know.”

He had barely finished speaking when he felt Zer0 lunge forward with his sword. Axton reflexively inhaled, but quickly found that he was uninjured. The blade had slipped sideways and gone under his arm, into the hard-light barrier behind him. Zer0’s sword had pierced right through, and the spot in the wall that was breaking burned to the touch. A loud, discordant sound was produced by the breaking wall, and, right before it became unbearably loud, the wall disintegrated. Axton collapsed onto his back without its support.

Before Axton had hit the floor, Zer0 was on his feet attacking the Maliwan soldier. He barely seemed trained--let alone armed--against Zer0. As soon as the soldier had drawn a gun with which to defend himself, Zer0 was halfway through a swing that put a deep cut into the soldier’s throat. He let out a sound halfway between a growl and a gurgle, and Zer0 plunged the blade into his chest to put him out of his misery. The soldier’s body collapsed to the floor with a single thump, and then he was still.

Zer0 dropped into a crouch and started digging through the corpse’s belongings. He came up with another med-hypo, and walked over to Axton, where he kneeled down, pulled aside the collar of Axton’s jacket, and plunged the syringe into his shoulder. 

While he waited for the syringe to empty, Zer0 held Axton’s head to one side with a soft touch. Axton tipped his head towards Zer0’s palm; He remembered the last time Zer0 had touched him before leaving Pandora (a passing touch on the arm) and he had missed it the whole time. He still struggled to believe how gentle these killing hands could be.

All too soon, he had been healed up a little. Zer0 got to his feet and took a few steps so that he could offer Axton a hand getting up, which Axton took. “You really had me going there for a minute.” 

As he usually did when he had nothing to say, Zer0 remained silent, but it was jarring to see his face while he did it. One corner of his mouth twitched, but otherwise all he did was blink. Axton found himself more agitated than he expected by the eye contact. “I, uh… You’re beautiful. I mean-- nice, uh, eyeliner?” 

Zer0 still didn’t answer, just bumped Axton’s shoulder as he walked past. He grabbed his ECHO off the ground, but didn’t use it; he just put it away. 

Axton picked up a handgun that the dead soldier had been carrying. Heavy, well-constructed; looked like a Maliwan Hellshock. Not bad. “Don’t you want to let anyone know you’re alright? Rhys has been beside himself.”

“Mission’s not over. / Rhys will be alright for now.” Zer0 ran a hand through his hair, pushing the front of it out of his face. “I want my helmet.”

“They’ve got my turret too. There’s usually somewhere they stash stuff they take off of people. Any ideas where, expert spy?”

Zer0’s blue eye lit up and cast a soft glow across his cheek and browbone. He spun around to look at the area as if he could see right through the walls and ceiling, then squinted and focused on a spot directly overhead. After a moment, his eye stopped glowing, and after grabbing the dead man’s other gun off the floor he took off at a brisk jog, leaving Axton to catch up with him. 

Axton was used to Zer0 not being very talkative. It had been a little stressful when they first started traveling together, but the two of them had quickly settled into a routine where Axton would just talk at Zer0 and Zer0 would put up with it. Following behind Zer0 with a gun in his hands, Axton felt almost at home. “Man, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Feels good to be in a life-threatening situation with a familiar face again. Well, familiar face in a metaphorical sense. ...Don’t you think it’s kind of funny that this is the first time I’ve seen your face when we literally had s-”

“Shh!” Zer0 had led the way up a flight of stairs to the next floor while Axton had been talking. He was now peering around the corner at the top of the stairs, and quickly recoiled like he had seen someone. “There are guards around. / No invisibility, / the module is dead.”

“Got it.” Axton stayed close to the wall but inched a little further up the stairs. He had spent a long time watching Zer0 fight, and knew that he would have to cover him more if Zer0 couldn’t disengage at will. 

Zer0 led the charge anyway, turning the corner with guns blazing, and Axton followed suit. The soldiers roaming the halls on this floor had much more time to defend themselves than had the one downstairs, but still struggled to pull it off. Their advantage was that neither Zer0 or Axton had a shield right now, which Axton remembered when he took a bullet in the side of one thigh. This was, at least, the kind of pain he expected out of a fight; he stayed on his feet and didn’t make a fuss.

The firefight was short. The width of the hallways made an easy chokepoint to fire down, and barely any troops had shown up to reinforce the guards after the first bullets were fired. However, there was some distant shuffling on a different floor. Their daring escape had not gone unnoticed. Zer0 slipped into a room on the left, with Axton close behind. 

They appeared to be in some kind of lab; there were screens across most of the walls at eye-level, as well as innumerable machines and small devices scattered around the room. Zer0 made a beeline for the back wall, where he found his helmet and secured it back on his head without hesitation. 

Axton started to wander around, hoping to catch sight of his belongings. “What’s it doing in here, you think? When we took people’s stuff at Dahl we just threw it in a locker somewhere.”

“Snooping, most likely. / Maliwan still wants my tech. / Yours too, I bet. Catch.” With the last word, Zer0 tossed a small, flat storage unit at Axton, which he caught with one hand. Without looking, he could recognize his turret in his hand. 

“I guess. I don’t think Dahl tech is so hard to understand that it would need to be in a fancy lab, but you never know. My gear better be somewhere around here, though.” As if summoned by Axton’s complaining, Axton caught sight of a footlocker on the floor with the lock ajar. He flipped it open and found a small pile of guns and equipment, with his ECHO device sitting squarely on top. “Bingo. Any of these yours?”

Zer0 came over to look, and only took a shield and a sniper rifle. The sniper rifle looked comically large compared to Zer0’s thin frame, but if he could shoot it as well as he used to, it was all good in Axton’s book. Axton extracted his gear, got everything situated, and looked up. “Great. What now?”

Zer0 stood quietly for a moment, tipping his head sideways like he was listening. “We get out.”

Axton listened as well, and noticed that the distant shuffle had now become a nearby shuffle. New soldiers would be on the floor soon, and it sounded like too many to reasonably take on with just the two of them in their current state. The loud, stomping steps of multiple Maliwan heavies only confirmed this suspicion. “Well, I don’t think we can go back the way we came.”

Zer0 walked over to the single window in the room and released the lock, then swung the window open and looked at Axton expectantly. 

“Absolutely not. If I had a shield that charged faster or I still had those long-fall attachments for my shoes, I would be all in favor of jumping out windows, but neither of those things is the case.”

“You're bleeding.” Zer0 gestured at Axton’s leg. 

“And I’m bleeding. You really don’t have a better idea?”

“Do you?”

“Absolutely not. I’ve never been the brains of this operation and you know that.” The footsteps sounded nearly outside the door, and Axton started walking towards the window. “I guess we’re jumping out windows.”

Zer0 projected a “:)” from the front of his helmet. To get out the window, all he had to do was put one hand on the windowsill, swing his feet over, and then he disappeared. For Axton this was a little more of a challenge; he climbed onto the counter and scooted over so that he could sit on the windowsill and look where he was going.

Zer0 had already landed and gotten down behind cover to wait for Axton. There was nothing to cushion his fall; it was just concrete. He was hesitant, but the sound of the pressure releasing on the door behind him gave him a nudge into the open air.

When he hit the ground, he tried to roll to lessen the impact, but he mostly just ended up sprawling on the ground. Zer0 inched over to check if he was okay. Axton sat up with a groan. He was winded, and he was sore where he had landed on one shoulder and one hip, but other than that he would survive. “I’ve done dumber things. Where to?”

“We can leave soon, but / I need a data center. / Spy stuff and all that.” Zer0 peeked over the top of the wall he was hiding behind and, having seen no one, started checking that his sniper rifle was loaded and ready to go.

“This isn’t Dahl by a long shot, but Dahl would have put one underground. Harder for your computers to get blown up that way.” Axton turned to check if anyone was coming to attack yet. There was a little shouting audible from the open window above, but other than that there was suspiciously little activity. No troops had appeared on the ground to stop them yet, and the distant commotion in the hangars seemed to have settled down at least a little. Axton wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign yet.

There wasn’t much time to mull it over. Zer0 was quickly back on his feet and Axton scrambled to follow, matching stride with Zer0 once he caught up. As he often did, Zer0 spoke without turning to look. “Underground. What else?”

“Well, we usually kept them under a storage building, but Maliwan seems to prefer something a bit flashier than that. They might have bundled command and data storage together, to keep the wiring simpler. I’m mostly just guessing, though. Didn’t they put a bunch of military data in a glorified brain in a jar? I feel like one of the new kids told me about that.”

Zer0 slowed to a walk for just a moment to take out a straggler in front of them who had spotted them, then sped right back up. It was strange; Axton had watched a military base descend into chaos after someone misfired a gun in the wrong place. In fact, he had watched it happen more times than he could count. The amount of nothing happening around here after so many people had been shot was starting to be a little upsetting. 

After taking a hard right, Zer0 slowed almost to a stop. They were in front of a building that looked more like a shed, and Zer0 was looking around like there was something he knew that Axton didn’t. Axton usually assumed that that was the case anyway. “Is this the spot?”

“Some activity, / of the electrical type, / but not an entrance.” Zer0 wandered closer to the side of the shed.

“Oh, that one’s easy. Over here.” Axton circled around the shed and, sure enough, there was a metal fuse box on one side. He flipped open the cover and hit the leftmost switch, which prompted a small section of concrete to open on the ground. It had been perfectly fitted and seamless, impossible to see if you weren’t looking for it. The pit underneath had a ladder leading down.

Zer0 looked at the opened entrance then back up at Axton, flashing a question mark in front of his helmet. Axton shrugged. “The way I heard it, some clowns broke their noncompetes back in the day and now some bases have similar codes. Don’t ask me.”

The room at the bottom of the ladder was unlit save for the active computer monitors. The room was plastered with them. Each seemed to be tracking something specific, although a few were split in half. Zer0 seemed to know what he was looking for and made a beeline for one of the keyboards. 

While he waited, Axton wandered around to look at some of the monitors. Many of them were tracking typical, boring statistics like the temperature in various buildings, the weather surrounding the base, or which ships needed repairs, but one in particular seemed worth reading for more than a moment: there was a screen tracking the vitals of various commanders. Some were dead, probably from all the fighting that day, but several more were absent from the base entirely, having registered in the system as alive before leaving. One of them was Katagawa.

“So, I know you’re busy right now.” Axton turned around to face Zer0. “But I have to ask: if Katagawa wasn’t here, where would he be, you think?”

Zer0 looked up and Axton gestured at the vitals screen. Zer0 peered at it for a moment, physically jerked in reaction, and started typing faster at the terminal he was using. He seemed agitated by what he found; a moment later, he was frantically messing with his ECHO in one hand and grabbing Axton by the front of the jacket with the other.

“It’s bad, huh?” If Zer0 was visibly losing his cool, that was never a good sign. There was no response. After a moment of waiting, the blinding lights of the Fast Travel network overtook Axton’s vision, and then they materialized in a small building on the outskirts of the Atlas campus.

Zer0 tried to take off right away, but Axton caught him by the arm before he got away. “You’re gonna go fight without half your gadgets working?”

Zer0 tapped at his shield on his hip, then disappeared. Axton felt Zer0’s arm wrest itself from his grip, and then he was gone. Axton shook his head to himself in confusion. He had hooked up his suit to siphon power from the generator in his shield, maybe? That would leave him a little defenseless, but it was too late now.

Axton stepped out of the little building, and immediately the entire area was shaken by an explosion. Shouting rose up from the Atlas soldiers in the courtyard, and several more ran past Axton towards the courtyard. Several smaller explosions went off in quick succession, ships started flying overhead, and gunfire quickly overtook the area. Axton’s ECHO wasn’t going off, so he assumed it had to be dead, because otherwise there would have been yelling over every ECHO channel he was connected to. 

Axton followed the soldiers he had seen go by earlier. There were Maliwan soldiers in the courtyard, many already dead on the ground, but the Atlas soldiers seemed to have the situation at least a little under control. On the other hand, Maliwan ships kept coming and dropping off reinforcements. No fucking wonder the base had been so calm: they were all coming here.

As Axton headed for the wall access on the far side of the courtyard, the defense turrets on the outer wall came back online. Someone was ahead of him. He caught the barest glimpse of the new Vault Hunters heading for the main building, Moze included; she had gotten out of the Maliwan base safely.

If this was just a run-of-the-mill bold offensive move, Zer0 wouldn’t have reacted like he did and the Raiders wouldn’t have sent all their talented new blood into the middle of an all-out corporate assault. Something had to be up.

The lobby was moderately busy, mostly with Maliwan troops roaming around. It was louder in the back courtyard, where Axton caught a glimpse of a large, flaming spiderant smacking a Maliwan trooper into the air. Either that was one of Fl4k’s pets, or things were worse than Axton thought.

While Axton helped the Atlas troops push back into the lobby, there was another ground-shaking explosion out the back of the building. Much to Axton’s relief, the Raiders returned to the lobby a few moments later, seeming largely unharmed. 

Zane grabbed Axton by the arm and pulled him into the elevator with the rest of them. "Good to see you're alright, lad; we could use the help."

"What's going on here? I think my ECHO is dead; I just showed up and Maliwan was wrecking the place.”

Amara hit a button on her ECHO to put it on speaker, and a stage-whisper from Rhys filled the small elevator. "Vault Hunters! Zer0 is trying to kill me!"

Amara shrugged. "That's the gist of it."

Axton shook his head. "No. No, that can't be right, he was just-"

Fl4k cut in. "We saw him killing Atlas soldiers when we got here."

"That's-" Axton tried to speak again, and this time was interrupted by Katagawa passionately monologuing at Rhys, which everyone else seemed to be actually listening to. Axton wasn't; he was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. That couldn't have been Zer0 killing those soldiers, but then what else could have happened? He trusted these people to have not just made it up, but it made no sense. Why would Zer0 freak out about getting here and then stab Rhys in the back? 

The elevator dinged as it reached the top floor. Axton was on the side that had opened, so he led the charge further into Rhys's office. The receptionist he had spoken to on his first visit was nowhere to be seen, and the actual office section of the floor was moderately messy like there had been some kind of scuffle.

Amara quickly caught sight of a button on Rhys's desk and hit it, prompting the desk to slide backwards towards the window and reveal a chute underneath that appeared to lead to the maintenance platform below. Amara was the first to take the plunge and the rest followed. 

On the platform, Rhys had collapsed to the ground and was scooting backwards away from what looked like Zer0 at a glance, but wasn't quite right. For one, the color of the suit was all wrong, but this guy didn't walk like Zer0, loomed in a way Axton had never seen Zer0 do, and when he reached back to draw his sword, it wasn’t a smooth, well-practiced motion like it should have been. 

Right as the sword was about to come down on Rhys’s cowering head, another glowing blade intercepted it and threw it sideways. Zer0 had appeared in his correct colors. After a moment of sparring, the intruder’s helmet was knocked off. He stumbled away, clutching at his face, and in an instant Axton recognized the hair: Katagawa.

Where the hell did he get that suit? 

Zer0 started to walk towards Rhys with one hand extended, but Katagawa hit a button on the wrist of his suit and Zer0 suddenly recoiled. He clutched at his helmet, almost pawing at it with one hand like he wanted it off, and then in a fraction of a second he sobered and stood up a little too straight. 

“Glad you decided to show up, Zer0.” Katagawa was getting a little too comfortable. Axton didn’t move yet, but he saw Zane starting to creep forward out of the corner of his eye. “Do me a favor and make sure Rhys doesn’t go anywhere while I tie up a few loose ends. Don’t kill him, though; he’s mine.”

As soon as Zer0 took a step towards Rhys, Zane lunged forward and put a shield between Rhys and his assailants. Zer0 took a swing at him that would have landed squarely on the throat if Zane didn’t swap places with a bright blue clone of himself at the last second.

The area exploded into gunfire and shouting. Rhys curled up on the ground as Zer0 continued to approach. The Raiders were busy with Katagawa, and Axton was worried that if he let anyone else fend off Zer0, they might kill him. Then he would either die or respawn on the loose inside Atlas HQ proper. Neither was allowable.

A shot on the ground at Zer0’s feet was enough to make him take a step back, and after firing Axton went for Rhys and grabbed him by the upper arm to haul him to his feet. “Time to go.”

Zer0 didn’t take kindly to the interference. Axton shoved Rhys behind himself and took the incoming blow himself, which turned out to be a mistake: whatever let Zer0’s sword break the hard-light barriers at the Maliwan base let him cleave through Axton’s shield like it wasn’t even there. A split formed in the shoulder of Axton’s jacket, and almost right away it felt wet with blood.

“This way!” Rhys took off towards what looked like a metal garage door on the side of the platform connecting to the building. Zer0 reacted first and darted after Rhys, leaving Axton to try and stop him. Axton grabbed the Hellshock he was carrying and fired at Zer0’s back with the Shock setting, hoping to break his shield, but it had surprisingly little effect: it was almost as if it wasn’t hitting a shield at all.

Behind the door Rhys was going for, there was a dimly lit concrete room with some computers immediately to the left. Rhys went left, dodging behind some shelves for cover. Axton had caught up enough to be right on Zer0’s heels, and as he slowed down enough to turn as well, Axton grabbed him around the waist and flung him back out the door. Zer0 might have been faster, but he had always been light enough for Axton to throw around when he got half a chance.

Rhys smacked a button to close the door, and Zer0 didn’t recover in time to get back through. With an exhale, Rhys turned to Axton. “What’s wrong with him?” 

Axton hadn’t relaxed. No way it was that easy. “We’re going to find out.” 

Sure enough, Zer0 materialized in the middle of the room. Axton was never going to understand how he got around like that, but now wasn’t the time to think too hard about it. Zer0 waited to see if someone else would move. No one did, so Zer0 took the opportunity; in the blink of an eye he was on Axton, taking out one knee from the back to throw him off balance and then shoving him against the wall of computers. Rhys squeaked nervously and backed himself into the corner. 

Axton tried to throw Zer0 off again, but he didn’t have the leverage. He would try to push, and Zer0 would lean sideways with the motion and then be back on him in an instant, sword inching closer to Axton’s torso with every return. 

Because of the console in front of the monitors he was up against, Axton’s feet weren’t flat on the floor. He managed to wrestle one leg up and throw his heel into Zer0’s stomach, which bought him just enough time to get back on his feet as Zer0 stumbled.

Zer0 disappeared, and Axton took a wide stance to prepare. After a moment of waiting, Axton barely reacted in time to avoid being stabbed straight through the spine when Zer0 materialized behind him. The momentum of the failed attack carried Zer0 forward, and Axton took the opportunity to grab him and put him in a chokehold. 

“Rhys!” Axton called out as he struggled to restrain Zer0; already he was moving to stab at Axton, and when Axton grabbed the arm Zer0’s sword was in, Zer0 simply tossed it to the other hand. “We need his helmet off!”

“I can’t just…” Rhys crept forward with his hands up in a grabbing position, but didn’t come anywhere near; as soon as he did, Zer0 pointed the top of his sword at Rhys to ward him off.

“You have to!” Faster than Axton could keep track of, Zer0 swung his sword around to a reverse grip and plunged it blindly behind him. Axton again managed to escape with a moderate cut and not a stab wound, but combined with his earlier injuries, things were starting to get out of hand. He growled through his teeth as Zer0 wriggled free. 

Zer0 went for the throat again, and Axton still had it in him to dodge in time, but Zer0 knocked him in the direction he had moved to throw him all the way to the ground. Axton started to get a very uncomfortable sense of deja vu as Zer0 held him down with a knee in the middle of his back. 

He could feel Zer0’s weird shift backwards as if he was pulling back to deal the killing blow, but it never came. When he wiggled enough to look, he found Rhys holding Zer0’s arm up by clutching it against his chest. 

Axton took the opportunity to flip over, pushing Zer0’s leg to the side of him instead of on his back, and tried to ignore that Zer0 was now straddling him. Rhys lost his grip as Zer0 freed his arm, and Axton had to twist sideways; Zer0’s sword hit the ground inches from his face. “Rhys! Helmet!” 

This time Rhys did as he was asked. In one motion, he grabbed Zer0’s helmet with both hands and pulled it cleanly away. Axton was trying to keep hold of Zer0’s wrists so that he couldn’t escape but it was going poorly; Zer0 simply twisted his arm to get out of Axton’s grip every time. His hair fell forward over his face, and along with the gentle blue glow on one side of his face, there were spots of red. The iris of his lit-up eye was red in patches and streaks where it had been solid blue before. His face was eerily calm, like it had been at the Maliwan base

Something looked like it was blocking the port on Zer0’s temple, which Rhys quickly noticed, and he snatched whatever it was away. Zer0’s body relaxed immediately, and Axton had to shift his hands to stop Zer0 from collapsing straight onto him. “You there, buddy? It’s okay.” Zer0’s eyes were open, and he was breathing alright, but he continued to slump, and Axton sat him on the floor and up against a wall. “Me and Rhys are here. Everything’s alright.”

Zer0 weakly reached out to Axton’s wounded shoulder. “Are you-”

“I’m fine. I’ve done worse to myself before.” In reality, it was starting to hurt quite a bit, but Axton decided that he was a big boy and he could tolerate it.

“Well, this explains a lot.” Rhys was examining the little device he had yanked out of Zer0’s head.

“What does?” Axton peered at it. It just looked like a plain flash drive to him.

“Zer0’s got an ECHO eye implant, like mine.” Rhys tapped at the port on his own temple. “It’s basically wired straight into our brains, so you put a little malware in there and get bad results. Maliwan must have put it on him; did he have it when you found him earlier?”

“No, definitely not.” Axton thought for a moment. “They did have his helmet for a little while, though.”

“That must be it. Here, scoot over, let me make sure it didn’t leave anything weird behind.” Axton scooted as requested, and Rhys sat down next to Zer0, producing a tiny, thin tool from a pocket. Rhys’s own ECHO eye lit up as he gently started poking at the port on Zer0’s head. “Sit still, buddy; this won’t hurt, I promise.” 

Axton turned back to the door, preparing to go back outside and help the Raiders, but Zer0 called him back. “They’ll be fine, Axton. / If anyone can do it, / I think it’s those four.”

Sure enough, after a little while, the Raiders came into the room with Katagawa’s body collapsed on the ground outside. By then, Rhys had finished his checkup, and Zer0 had examined his helmet and put it back on. 

After Rhys had sent the Raiders on their way with their reward, he turned to Axton. “Well, I can’t possibly thank you enough for your help. Who knows what would have happened to any of us otherwise. I can pay you for your time, perhaps?”

If Axton was being completely honest with himself, he could use the money. But it seemed like a bad time to try and extract it out of Rhys. “No need, but thank you for the offer.” He thought for a moment “Although, I do have to ask; Zer0, did you call me because you know you were walking into a trap? The timing seemed awfully convenient.”

“Not exactly, no. / I knew what might happen, but / I planned it alone.”

“So you just called because you missed your old buddy Axton so much?” Axton tipped his head and grinned. Zer0 punched him in the not-injured shoulder.

“Well, you’re free to leave any time you like, but if you want to stay in town for a while I would be glad to give you a place to stay. We have some dorms on campus; Zer0 has one, even though he hardly uses it.”

“Ah, I can just bunk with him, then. We got really good at sharing a sleeping area back in the day.”

Axton had meant it mostly as a joke, but Zer0 shrugged and said, “Sure.” 

Rhys looked back and forth between the two of them. “If you’re sure that works for both of you. If there’s anything else I can do, you know where to find me.” 

After Rhys had left, Axton glanced at Zer0. “That’s really okay with you?”

Zer0 faced Axton. “Why not?”

“I dunno, I guess I just assumed hearing nothing from you for several years meant you didn’t like me. Vault Hunters are really bad at settling down and I know how it is. I don’t want or expect a house with a white picket fence. But you hooked up with me twice and then disappeared, you know?”

Zer0 was silent for a moment, and eventually looked away. When he finally spoke, he started heading for the elevator, gesturing for Axton to follow him. “That shoulder looks bad. / Let’s go get you fixed up, and / then both get some rest.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is baby short im also sorry

Zer0’s room had the same color palette as the rest of the Atlas campus, largely thanks to a strip of bright red lights circling the top of the walls. The living area that the front door led to looked like it had been converted from a normal living room to some kind of scheming room, complete with a large corkboard on one wall with red strings connecting various pictures and paper cutouts. 

The hallway to the right led to the bedroom, which was surprisingly bare; the bed was pretty much the only piece of furniture in the room. There wasn’t a dresser, a side table, anything.

“Where do you keep your clothes if not in here? Please tell me you don’t sleep in your suit.” 

“I do.”

“That can’t be comfortable for you.” 

“It’s alright.”

Axton took his backpack off and started digging through it. “I keep a couple changes of clothes on me. Do you want one? I think the bigger one should fit you.”

“...Yes, please.” At this, Axton handed Zer0 one of the pairs of t-shirt-and-sweatpants sets he had, and Zer0 left to the bathroom to change. Axton stayed where he was to change out of his combat clothes.

Axton had been prepared to let the ghosting matter lie. He had said his part, and Zer0 seemed like he didn’t want to talk about it, so he figured that was that. It hurt, sure, but not anymore than it did when it happened. But when Zer0 came out of the bathroom, letting his hair out of the two small ponytails he kept the back in, he seemed to have had a change of heart on the ‘talking about it’ part. “I really didn’t / think it bothered you that much. / You could have called.”

“Yeah, well, most people assume they got ghosted for a reason. I didn’t want to bother you if you didn’t want to hear from me.” Axton exhaled. It was a little frustrating that Zer0 was refusing to see his side of this. Though, he guiltily noticed, he had been right: the set of clothes did fit Zer0 alright. Everything was a little shorter on him than on Axton, but he was so thin that it was very baggy, but in a cute way. 

“There was no reason.” Zer0 ruffled up his hair after taking the last hair tie out. “I did want to hear from you-”

“Then you could have acted like it!” Axton raised his voice without meaning to, and immediately winced. “Sorry.” He had expected that he would be able to have this conversation with a level head, but he was more invested in this than he thought. “Look, I get it, I probably should have taken some initiative, but can you blame me for thinking you hate me when you’re such the silent type that you didn’t even tell me when you were leaving Pandora?”

Zer0 stared. He didn’t seem upset, just shocked. “Hate you? No, never. / I thought it was just casual, / did I miss something?”

“...No. It really was supposed to be.” Axton closed his eyes tight for just a moment. This whole thing felt like it was coming apart. “I… Look, I went into it knowing it was a ‘we’ve been in the middle of nowhere saving the world and everyone needs some human contact sometimes’ kind of thing, and I really had myself convinced that that was all it was until you left, and then I was like, oh fuck, I miss him a little more than I should, I didn’t miss Maya like that when she went to Athenas, that’s a problem.”

Zer0 had been still while listening to Axton talk, but now he started to take slow steps towards him. “Axton.”

Axton backed away at an equal pace to Zer0’s approach. “I thought I could just forget about it! You know, I got divorced all those years ago and I survived it, so I thought I could just give it some time, and it worked a little bit. I started doing Arms Race with Salvador, everything was all good, I didn’t think about it, it didn’t hurt--” Axton paused to swallow. He felt tears coming on, and he most definitely did not want to cry right now. “--and then I come here and I see you again and it just feels bad all over again.”

“Axton.” Zer0 was a little more insistent this time.

“And I know it’s not even fair to you for me to come here and be like this!” Axton stopped backing away as the back of his thighs hit the windowsill. “Then I thought you were going to kill me today and I figured, fuck, maybe I deserve it, you know?”

As Zer0 stepped closer, he was lit by the pale blue moonlight instead of the red lights in the room. Axton blinked and the tears in his eyes spilled over; through the blur, he could see Zer0 reaching towards his face. He closed his eyes at the brush of fingertips against his jaw, and then Zer0 was kissing him and his lips were soft and warm and everything hurt just a little bit less. 

Axton gave up. He pulled Zer0 in by the front of his shirt and kissed him back every time he stopped. It didn’t matter what was meant by it at this point; passing it up was out of the question.

Zer0 pulled away for a moment and examined Axton’s tear-streaked face, running his thumb along his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Axton rubbed at one of his eyes. “No, I’m sorry.”

Zer0 pressed a kiss to Axton’s forehead. “You need sleep.”

“Yeah, you too.” Axton stepped away from the window and promptly flopped down on the bed. Zer0 was right. After the day he’d just had, he could use some sleep. As soon as Axton had nestled under the covers, Zer0 climbed over him and cuddled up next to him, the way they used to sleep on the cold nights when they were in the Raiders: Axton flat on his back, Zer0 resting his head on Axton’s chest, and both of them buried under blankets. 

Nothing else was said. Axton got to sleep easier than he had in years.


End file.
